Industry stakeholders who took turns to appraise the port industry in 2015 have identified clearing bottlenecks which have resulted in delayed cargo delivery to importers and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) restriction on access to foreign exchange for importers of 41 selected items as the major issues that led to low business activity at the nation’s seaports.
Port business, they say, was at its lowest ebb in the year under review, as the ports lost a huge percentage of activity to ports in neighbouring West African countries, where it is easier to do business.
Also, global container trade statistics show that volumes from Asia to West Africa decreased in nine of the first ten months of 2015; compared with the prevous year, with the most recent year-on-year declines reaching 10 percent.
Nigeria’s currency, the naira, has subsequently fallen to record lows against the US dollar, leading to stalled construction contracts and international investment, including reduced consumer demand. This led to a fall in container volumes and reduced vessel traffic.
Tony Anakebe, a maritime analyst, said in an interview with our correspondent, that the year was not favourable to port business, owing to a sharp drop in the volume of goods coming into the ports.
Anakebe added that importers were having a tough time accessing foreign exchange to import goods, due to the restriction placed on inflow and outflow of forex by CBN.
“Business activities in the ports were largely affected by the slow pace in Nigeria’s business climate due to the six months it took the present administration to appoint ministers to steer the economy to a progressive direction. This created so much uncertainty in the polity as lack of economic policies discouraged a lot of investors and importers from going into serious business,” he explained.
Anakebe, who said that the slow down economic activity in the ports resulted in Customs’ commands not being able to meet their revenue targets for the year and Nigerian ports losing almost N1trillion worth of business, added that most Nigerian billed goods were diverted to the Republic of Benin, Ghana and Cameroun, where they are then smuggled through land borders into Nigeria.
According to him, port business was also hindered by the clearing bottlenecks which made it difficult for containers to be moved out of the ports in due time. “We had problems with scanning of containers, due to the bad state of the machines. From June till now, all containers were undergoing 100 percent physical examination, due to the failure of scanning operations by the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS).
“The bad state of the roads leading to the two major ports (Apapa and Tin-Can Island ports) and indiscriminate parking of trailers on the port access roads, resulted in difficulty in moving containers in and out of the ports, and it also led to delays in cargo clearance.
“The return of some sacked government agencies – State Security Service (SSS), Plant and Animal Quarantine, Anti-Bomb Squad, among others, also contributed to bottlenecks at the port in 2015,” he added.
Confirming this, Jonathan Nicole, President, Shippers Association of Lagos State, said the difficulty in doing business at the port resulted to people diverting their cargoes to ports in the neighbouring countries and it also led to massive loss of government revenue.
“The ports in the year under review were not as busy as before, such that AMP Terminal says the port as at November lost about 35 percent of its cargo, but now it has gone up to 40 percent due to policy of forex restriction. The CBN policy restricted Nigerian ports from making progress. A lot of businesses were closed and the remaining ones were forced to reduce staff strength to cut cost,” he said.
Nicole advised government to reverse the policy, so as to uplift business and jobs. “The auto policy is another monster that emptied our ports and we are yet to see made in Nigerian vehicles,” he added.
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